


Discoveries

by babbling_bug



Category: Doctor Who, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babbling_bug/pseuds/babbling_bug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the Knight Bus can pick Harry up, he meets a very odd man...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discoveries

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Crossover Gifset on Tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/59664) by waywardism. 



Harry finally stops stomping when he reaches the corner of Magnolia Crescent, not feeling childish at all as he collapses on the kerb next to his trunk, arms aching, head pounding, and thoroughly exhausted.

If that was a tantrum, then Harry doesn’t know why Dudley is so fond of them. He doesn’t feel better at all.

And any moment now he’s going to get an owl, just like last year. Only this time he really is at fault, and it’s quite a bit more serious than sending his Aunt Petunia’s meticulously decorated pudding crashing to the floor.

There are laws against using magic on muggles. And his life is over.

Even if he has to get three strikes for improper use of magic before he gets his wand snapped in half (and gets expelled from Hogwarts and just what would he do with his life after _that_?), he’s pretty sure assault on a muggle counts for a whole lot more.

It wasn’t his fault Aunt Marge is so completely terrible.

(but of course she is; she’s a _Dursley_ , and they’re all terrible)

If she hadn’t insulted his parents, he would have taken anything else she said about him.

(but that’s not an excuse, _that’s not an excuse_ )

On the corner of Magnolia Crescent and Magnolia Road, Harry Potter sits defeated, contemplating the rotten state of his life.

Paranoid and at his wits’ end, when a breeze picks up from behind him (impossible, he’s sitting in the mouth of an alley), a mysterious _vworp vworp vworp_ penetrating the muggy summer night, he thinks that the Ministry of Magic has come to take him away. Because why else would something odd be happening in Little Whinging if Harry Potter wasn’t in trouble?

But no. There are no wizards when he twists around to face his fate; no stern-faced authoritarian come to uphold the law and damn your excuses.

There is only a blue box that hadn’t been there before.

A blue police call box, which is pretty weird, he's willing to accept; but not what he was expecting.

Harry’s not sure what is going on, but he doesn’t have much time to think about it because that’s when the doors burst open to reveal a tall, broadly grinning man with hair as messy as his own.

“Hullo!” he exclaims, waving his fingers, sounding entirely too cheerful for Harry’s dark mood to tolerate.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing here then?”

Harry ignores the man’s question in favour of his own.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the Doctor,” he grins, not at all concerned with Harry’s rudeness.

“Are you here to take me in?” The man shrugs, shutting the doors to the blue box before Harry thinks to look inside.

“Depends. Do you want to go with me?” The man- the ‘Doctor’ (and wizards have some weird names, but at least they’re names; this one just has a title)- asks with a strange, secretive smile.

“Go where?” He frowns and for some reason, Harry doesn’t think they are having the same conversation.

“Well, before I stopped here I was thinking of taking another spin around Saturn- you know they still don’t know what those rings are made of by the year 5 billion? Nobody could ever figure it out (not even me!)- and after that, I have a very important appointment with the King of Crewine; his daughter’s gone missing again, but she’s really just hiding in the gardens-- they’re great though, the gardens, got aubora trees that are forty feet tall!”

Harry stopped following after ‘the King of Cru-ee-nuh’ (which, he is sure, is not a country on Earth) but he thinks it best that he stand, just in case he’s dealing with a crazy person and needs to run. “I’m sorry, but-- _what_?”

The man grins again and steps forward, holding his hand out for Harry to shake.

“I’m The Doctor, Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey.”

Harry has no response.

“And you are Harry Potter. Wizard.” The Doctor’s eyes sparkle as he takes Harry’s mysteriously raised hand (how had that happened, really) and shakes it firmly. “And may I just say: it is a great honour, Mr. Potter.”

“Sorry, sorry- I- did you say _planet_ Gallifrey?”

“Yup!”

Harry backs away slowly.

“Oh, come on now; don’t be like that!” The Doctor is still grinning and Harry doesn’t know what to think, but he stops moving.

“Though, I really am curious- what are you doing here?”

He doesn’t know why, but Harry answers honestly.

“I ran away.”

“Why?”

“I blew up my Aunt Marge.”

The Doctor winces but nods sympathetically.

“Well~, I wouldn’t worry about that. They’ll put her right. Where were you going?”

Harry blinks because, of course, he doesn’t know. He didn’t think that far ahead-- he never does.

“I don’t know,” he answers.

“Excellent! I love not knowing!” the Doctor shouts, clapping his hands together and abruptly about-facing. “How do you feel about visiting the rings of Saturn?”

Surprising himself, Harry finds that he has already taken a step forward before he’s questioning the absurdity of it all.

“Um, I’m sorry, but how?”

Half inside the blue box, the Doctor turns around and leans against one of the doors, patting it affectionately.

“With the TARDIS”

“Tardis?”

“Ooh, don’t say it like that! T.A.R.D.I.S. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. My time machine.”

The Doctor is grinning like a child and Harry’s caught between questioning the existence of a time machine, and asking how said time machine is also simultaneously a space ship and a police call box.

“Sorry, but there’s no such thing as a time machine. Not in real life.”

The strange man frowns, disappointed.

“Now that’s no way to think! You- Harry Potter- a wand-waving wizard, and you don’t believe in time travel?”

“Wizards can’t time travel.”

“Oh, yes, they can—they’re just not as good at it as I am.”

Harry’s lost it again.

“Sorry, but that makes it sound as if you’re not a wizard.”

“Very good, Mr. Potter- Harry, can I call you Harry?- I thought I already said I was a Time Lord from Gallifrey.”

Harry picks up one end of his trunk, stowing Hedwig’s empty cage under his free arm.

“I’m leaving now.”

“But don’t you want to see?”

“See what?” Harry near-shouts back, even as he drags his trunk away from the clearly crazy man.

“The rings of Saturn! The gardens of Crewine! All of Time and Space!”

He doesn’t stop; he’s got no reason to. If not crazy, then the man may just want to kidnap him, or hand him over to the Ministry. Both are bad.

“No thanks!”

“Not even to prove that I’m wrong?” The Doctor’s voice is farther away and Harry turns to see why; it’s always good to keep unpredictable people in your sight—he learnt that with Lockhart.

The door of the police box has been left ajar, bright yellow light flooding out, and Harry can see entirely too much to resist.

*

The next year, when he sees the inside of the Weasleys’ tent, he grins and makes a note to remember this and to tell the Doctor- if he ever sees him again, that is- even as he feels a sharp pang of loss and disappointment that the tent, for all its curios, is just so _dull_. That it is not a fetching shade of coral-gold on the inside, and humming with life, and shining everywhere with the prospect of new, beautiful, wonderful _discoveries_.

Several years after that, he sleeps in the same bigger-on-the-inside tent and laments the fact that he does not, in any way, feel safe; that there is no Doctor leading him through danger, and no gold-coloured warmth greeting him every time he enters the tent, soaking into him and making him feel as if he is home.

When he dreams- bathed in blue-gold light and not at all disturbed by the heaving sound of ancient but steady machinery- the Doctor tells him that he is brave, that he is a hero, and a good man.

Harry hangs on to the thought and reminds himself that the Doctor has seen his future.


End file.
